Tag: philosophy

Who am I? is the main question of my life. When my father died, when I studied philosophy, when I sat my first sesshin, during the weeks after the births of our children, when I wrote my first screenplay, when I threw the I Ching—I have always found this to be the core question I keep returning to.

A few weeks ago, I made a new discovery on the path to answering the Who am I? question. It started when I went looking online for my mother’s birth certificate which I found on ancestry.com. I then started looking for her family in the 1930 census, which was so thorough, experts say it’s a good place to start.

In Kentucky, we called our grandfather Papaw, and our grandmother, Mamaw. I knew my mom—named Margaret after her mother—had an older brother named Rodney and a younger sister named Joanne. Rodney was killed flying an airplane, and my Aunt Joanne still lives in Paducah. I also knew Papaw’s name was Joseph E. Thomas and he worked at the first Coca Cola bottling company in Paducah. His house was full of antiques, and a lot of them were from his work. He had the very first bottle of Coke from the plant, the original recipe, still unopened. I remember looking into a locked glass cabinet that held trays with the logo on it, and a toy delivery truck with miniature wooden crates holding tiny glass bottles of Coke no more than an inch tall.

There were a lot of Joseph Thomases in the 1930 census, but I did find one family in Paducah where the wife’s name was Margaret. This could be it, I thought. But in the digital preview, the 3 kids were named Joseph, Margaret and Joe. Disappointed, I still clicked to look at the actual document and found a real treasure.

First of all, you’re looking at the handwriting of the census taker, that most human of all artifacts. A beautiful, utilitarian script. There are places where the ink is erased and written over, but not quite dark enough.

My eyes look down the column of names and I see Thomas, Joe E., head of the household at 30 years old. His wife, Margaret is 31. Then, the first son is Joseph R. Thomas. Could that “R” stand for “Rodney?” And a daughter named Margaret, and the final child, just “11/12 months” was “Joe. A” and listed as a daughter—Joanne!

It was like a puzzle coming together in my mind. This was my mother’s family on April 12, 1930. The census taker was sitting with them in their home with the antique Coca Cola bottles.

Suddenly I could see right through my computer screen, right through the handwriting of Mrs. Gus E. Hank, Jr., right through the years and see Papaw in his chair, Mamaw serving Cokes, the brother and sister sitting politely quiet on the living room couch, and the baby sister asleep in a basinet. And just for a moment, I could hear the glass wind chimes that hung from the ceiling blow in the breeze as the door opened and the census taker took her leave.